SC - Jellies vs. aspics

[david friedman]

At 8:35 PM -0400 6/8/98, Christine A Seelye-King wrote:
>... one of my entries was from Sir Kenelme Digby's 'A
>Closet Opened'.  It was for 'Pipins in Jelly'.  It called for pippins
>sliced, and placed in  water and boiled .  Strain off the liquor, and
>reserve it until morning.  Boil Orange and Lemon peele, and dry them
>overnight.  Take refined white sugar ("Then take of double refined and
>finely beaten and searced Sugar...") a pound to every pint of Pippin
>liquor, plus 10 ounces of pippins, and boil it all together , adding
>lemon and the sugar gradually as it boils, till it is clear (after
>skimming the scum) and has become jelly.  Take the pippins and orange and
>lemon peel, arrange in glasses, and pour the jelly over them.  Sounds
>simple enough, I thought, but I missed out on one important thing.
>Pippins are apples, but not like the apples in the grocery store.  They
>are smaller, and have 	LOTS MORE PECTIN IN THEM!  I added so much
>gelatin to make the stuff gel, it wasn't funny.
>...  The earlier Pippins had the chemical makeup to make this dish
>work, that modern apples just didn't have! ...

I'm surprised that it didn't work.  I make apricot jam (modern recipe) and,
since apricots are a low-pectin fruit, I use apples to get my pectin.  I
find that the liquid from a couple of medium-sized apples, sliced core,
peel, and all, cooked in a cup of water and strained, will jell the jam
made from 3 pounds of apricots and 2 1/4 pounds of sugar.   I most commonly
use Newtown Pippin apples, which are not a period variety--they are a green
pie apple sold around here (West), usually under the name "Pippin
Apple"--but I would think any cooking apple would do.  Early in my
experimenting I made the mistake of peeling the apples and it didn't jell;
it seems that most of the pectin is in the peel.  Could that have been your
problem?

>Plus, there's your clear fruit jelly!
>Christianna

Note that Digby is mid-17th century.  This is the period during which sugar
is becoming a lot more readily available in England, moving down the social
scale from being used in spice quantities by the very rich to being
available in fair quantity to the middle class.  The use of sugar to
preserve fruit in the form of jam or jelly seems to be just coming in at
this period, so in this case I would be hesitant to take Digby as evidence
for what was being done in England sixty years earlier.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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